S. Bolton - Dead Scared

Evi decided to let it go. She picked up a file from a small table by her side and opened it. ‘I found something that worried me,’ she began, flicking through the first few pages. ‘Shortly after we met on Tuesday. I didn’t mention it straight away because I wanted to think about it and I certainly didn’t want to put it in an email.’

Looking up, she saw a tiny flake of mascara high on Laura’s left cheek. Oddly, it suited her, like an old-fashioned, painted beauty spot.

‘You have to understand this is very difficult for me,’ Evi went on. ‘Patient confidentiality is sacrosanct in the medical profession. At least it should be. Talking to you at all without clearing it with – well, with the world and his wife, frankly – is putting my career at risk.’

‘I understand,’ said Laura.

‘You picked up on Bryony’s fear that she’d been raped,’ Evi said after a moment. ‘Bryony is a very troubled young woman with all sorts of problems. I just wondered why that, of everything in her case notes, struck you.’

Laura dropped her eyes. ‘It’s an interest of mine,’ she said. ‘I joined the police to work on violent crime against women. So it’s natural it would strike a chord.’

Evi half considered asking if violent crime was something of which the detective had personal experience. Bad idea. She was letting her interest in Laura Farrow herself get in the way of the job both of them were trying to do. She nodded at Laura to go on.

‘But it was more than that,’ Laura said. ‘Everything else going on in Bryony’s life, the problems sleeping, the stress over workload, her feelings of worthlessness, they were all of her own making, if you know what I mean. I’m not trying to minimize her problems, far from it, I’m just trying to say that they were … oh, help me out here, you’re the psychiatrist.’

‘Of an internal origin?’ suggested Evi.

‘Exactly. Rape, though, is quite the opposite. Rape is inflicted upon you by an external aggressor.’

‘If the rape was real,’ Evi reminded her, and saw a flash of annoyance in the girl’s hazel-blue eyes. ‘As opposed to something Bryony either imagined or invented. Are you sure you’re OK, Laura? Your hands are shaking.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Laura, a bit faster than was strictly polite. ‘Thank you. I know the counsellor on your team wasn’t convinced by Bryony’s story, but my instinct when a woman says she’s been raped is to give her the benefit of the doubt.’

This young woman had been abused, possibly even raped, herself. Evi was now sure of it. She wondered if her superiors in the police service were aware of her history.

‘Good for you,’ she said. ‘So if I told you that four other students claimed to have been raped, in a manner very similar to that which Bryony reported, in the months leading up to their taking their own lives, you’d consider that significant?’

Evi watched Laura nod her head slowly, saw the spark leap into her eyes.

‘We’re talking a period of five years,’ Evi went on. ‘No proof in any case. Nothing to corroborate the women’s stories.’

‘Tell me about them.’

‘I can’t,’ said Evi. ‘That’s the problem.’

‘They’re dead,’ Laura argued.

Evi shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Then how on earth do you expect me—’

Evi held up a hand. ‘Three years ago,’ she said, ‘a patient of the clinic, we’ll call her Patient A—’

‘Just give me first names,’ said Laura.

‘If I give you first names, you’ll be able to identify them from newspaper reports.’

‘OK, tell me what happened to Patient A,’ said Laura, who was almost certainly thinking she could probably do that anyway.

‘Patient A reported bad dreams, problems sleeping, and a fear of someone entering her room at night,’ Evi said. ‘One night, convinced she’d been raped, she went to the police. There was no physical evidence at all. She killed herself six weeks later.’

Laura wrote in her notebook.

‘A few months before that, Patient B, a medical student, reported similar fears,’ said Evi. ‘Bad dreams of a sexual nature, waking up feeling hungover and sluggish, even though she claimed she hadn’t been drinking or taken anything. Patient B never used the word rape. She felt as though she was being violated repeatedly, but she thought it was her own mind that was doing the damage.’

‘That’s creepy,’ said Laura. ‘She killed herself too?’

Evi nodded. ‘At the start of that same year, another girl, Patient C, reported her fears of ongoing rape to the police,’ she said. ‘Excessive levels of ketamine were found in her bloodstream that she swore she hadn’t taken. Other than that, though, no evidence. The police were sympathetic but had nothing to go on.’

‘You said four,’ Laura reminded her.

‘Patient D attempted to kill herself five years ago,’ Evi said. ‘Similar history. Bad dreams, trouble sleeping, vague recollections of sexual abuse.’

‘Attempted? You mean she’s still alive?’

Evi said nothing. After a moment, Laura stood up and crossed to the window. ‘Since you found the figures on suicide attempts,’ she said, over her shoulder, ‘our list has gone up to twenty-nine.’

‘That’s true,’ agreed Evi.

Laura turned back to look at her. ‘You know who they all are?’ she asked.

Evi nodded.

‘But you won’t tell me?’

‘I’m not ready to be struck off just yet,’ Evi told her. ‘Besides, there are other ways you can get the information. There’ll be coroner’s reports on the actual suicides. The police can access those, as long as you prove to the coroner you have good reason.’

Laura didn’t look convinced. Her lips pursed and her eyes fell to the floor. Then she seemed to think of something. She looked up and forced a polite smile on to her face.

‘I do understand,’ she told Evi. ‘Thank you for telling me what you have. I’ll discuss it with my senior officers. If they think it important, I’m sure they’ll take it further.’

Laura Farrow was up to something she shouldn’t be. There was a glint of excitement behind those eyes now. And she was looking at the back of the door where her jacket was hanging.

‘Let me know if anything comes up, won’t you?’ Evi asked her.

Laura agreed that she would but she was already mentally somewhere else. She crossed the room, pulled down her jacket and put it on. A second later she was gone.

VISITING TIME HAD just started but there was no one in the small, private room with its tropical microclimate except Bryony herself. As I approached the protective tent, I could see that the cadaver’s face had been fastened to Bryony’s own flesh with centimetre-long steel staples. They ran around her eyes and her mouth, along the top of her head. Frankenstein, I couldn’t help thinking. Frankenstein stitched dead people together to make a living creature.

Bryony’s ventilator had been removed again. All that was left was a small length of plastic pipe attached to her throat in case the staff needed to hook her up again quickly. For the moment, she was breathing unaided.

I would rather be dead. I would a million times rather be dead than spend a single day looking like this.

The door closed behind me and, at the faint swishing sound it made, Bryony’s eyes opened. She looked at me and blinked.

‘Hello,’ I said.

Her eyes were bright blue. Beautiful eyes, hardly touched by the fire, but seeing them move beneath dead skin was like watching an animated corpse. I pulled the bedside chair a little way from the bed and sat down. I think I’d been hoping I’d no longer have to see her eyes. It didn’t work. She turned her head and those eyes were fixed on me again.